The invention relates to equipment for feeding substantially parallelepiped groups of commodities to an in-line machine unit.
Such equipment is directed specifically though by no means exclusively toward the tobacco industry, the parallelepiped groups of commodities being, for example, packs of cigarettes, and the power machine being one or a number of typical wrapping units by which the parallelepiped is ultimately packaged.
Conventionally, the single packs of cigarettes are enveloped in a transparent cellophane wrapper by a relative machine unit, then gathered together into groups of parallelepiped shape consisting of a given number of individual packs. Packs emerging from the cellophane wrapping unit are formed into groups, most of which have two stacked layers, each of which is made up of a given number of single packs arranged side by side, i.e. with their narrower longitudinal surfaces in flush contact one with the next.
The group thus composed is fed into a further wrapping unit that will either envelop it in a single sheet of paper, or box it into a precreased folding carton.
Additional units may also be utilized, located further downline, to envelop the package or carton in an outer transparent wrapper.
In the event of there being a variation in the dimensions of the pack of cigarettes in production, all machines down-line of the cellophane wrapping unit have to be adapted accordingly by replacement of their relevant working parts. However, when such variations happen to exceed given limits, adaptation by replacement of parts no longer suffices, and it becomes necessary to replace the entire machine unit performing each operation. Such will be the case, for example, when passing from the manufacture of regular cigarettes (approx 0.30"in diameter) to the manufacture of super slims (approx 0.15"); this is a step involving a marked reduction in the depth of the individual pack, and, clearly enough, in the relative dimension of the final package, given that this is a multiple of the individual dimension.